It’s taken Kal Penn just two days to raise more than $600,000 via a crowd-funding fundraiser to help refugees following President Donald Trump’s executive order to ban refugees and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries.
Penn, a New Jersey-born Indian American actor who currently stars in ABC’s “Designated Survivor” as a White House speechwriter, was a real-life White House associate director of public engagement under President Barack Obama.
His fundraiser began Saturday, when he received an Instagram comment: “You don’t belong in this country you f—king joke.”
Penn named the project “Donating to Syrian Refugees in the name of the dude who said I don’t belong in America.”
To the dude who said I don’t belong in America, I started a fundraising page for Syrian Refugees in your name. https://t.co/NOR5P48fBi pic.twitter.com/jtJOsK9GrU
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) January 28, 2017
“I saw [the comment] and I thought, we’re all feeling inspired to do the right thing, and I think the Women’s March was a great example of standing up against the tyranny we’re experiencing right now,” Penn told CNN. “Look, I’m a pretty privileged guy, but I was reading that comment thinking, what about the 14-year-old me? Or the kids who look like me out there who don’t have the luxury of this kind of platform? Maybe we can raise $2,500 and show guys like that that we’re better than this.”
“All I did was put up a page, right?” Penn said. “It just speaks to the tens of thousands of people who felt the same way I did and said, ‘Let’s help some refugees out.””
